Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Bury My Heart

Start to finish
Visions I can't diminish
Rhymes in my brain
Images of darkness, hell, and pain
Finding their way to words
On my page
Ideas borne of incessant rage?
Or the wisdom of an aberrant sage?

With no rhythm or melody
I've got my rhymes
Painting pictures of a dark reality
Maybe you'll wonder "How cold can he really be?"
But I hope the words flowing from me
Open your mind
And brighten your eyes to see
A world where your lungs are gonna find it hard to breathe

North, South, East, and West
We're puttin' our luck to the test
Mess after mess
One after another
Swept under the rug like the rest

From the fields and streams
To concrete jungles of streets
The mountainous peaks
to the barren oceans deep
Decaying waste leaks,
and the propants seep
Days "beyond index" turn to weeks
Leaving the outlook kinda bleak
Normally, anger and pain would begin to creep
But just as I speak
the Dow is about to peak
Just one collapse or another playing
Hide and seek
Sneak peeks at a world crumbling beneath our feet

Who knows the source
Of the flows
Of the ups, downs
Highs and lows
The valleys and mountains
Where my mind goes
From finish to start
A river of images flowin'
showin' a world fallin' apart

At the border down south
Native lands with a war torn
poor living hand to mouth
Children in the fields
The sun bakes and their skin peels
Living on whatever the suits don't steal
The game is profit
The score is yield
That's the deal

Fires march and the drums roll
Our thirst for darkness takes its toll
As the pain starts at the hole for my soul
A place where no lights shine to hide the dark
It's here I'll bury my heart

West to east
We see the war isn't over
No, not in the least
A decade it took
And we just couldn't kill the beast
Play the charade by the book
And don't hold your breath for peace
(Just ask: Who's next on the hook for the empire to fleece?)

Like the sweater unraveling from
finish to start
I see a pulling thread
on my heart
buried in the dark
with the forgotten dead
Bodies blue on an anger red
"Not I, not I" they said

In an East always in the middle
Lookin' from
the ground to the sky
We see the hawks fly
And the doves flee
Two years round and round
Circlin' the sounds of absurdities
Reels of footage thrillin'
Capturin' blood spillin' on both banks of the Euphrates
While the living hell of shell after shell saw
80,000 blasted away from this reality
A fight between the powers that be
Ya know, Inaction and Complicity
Fighting anywhere they need
From sea to shining sea
And all the deserts and jungles
in between

You can ignore what you see
Bury your head in the clouds
Grasp for eternity
And fill your mind with glee
But you'll come to find
By land and air or sea
your escape is empty

In a North,
barred from its South
More souls living hand to mouth
A tiger who wishes he wasn't a mouse
Opens a rift in the sky
And burns a chasm
in the ground
With no reason why
A violent spasm
as my heart forgets to pound

It's nothing new
Just somethin' new to dismiss
Death, destruction
Pain and avarice
From day one we've been
Teeterin' on this precipice
It's an unraveling
And we're all pulling our part
From start to finish
And finish to start
I'm livin' my life
Standing as a man apart

I've buried my heart with the forgotten
So when it seems like my soul is
nothing but twisted and rotted
Remember, I'm buried
with the forgotten
the locked up,
the dead and downtrodden
And when you finally bury your heart
You'll wonder too,
as its pulse is droppin'
For all our knowledge and all our effort
Where have we ever really gotten?

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Open Mic Night

We got 'em all
Irish, redheads, and blondes
Daughters, brothers
Mothers and sons
No tellin' how deep
The connection runs
Through the ground

Scott out with the sound
But Vernell up front
Leading the pack
All the way from the back
Clayton can't hear shit
As he'll readily admit
But on we go bit by bit
No Mic on stage
Won't stop the show,
oh no no no
We gonna roll with it

With us tonight
We got a few newbies
One of em writes
But they're just Hayden's groupies
The boy gotta gang
Straight outta the movies

Though their image
Can be groovy
Early on and throughout
they tell us "Drugs are bad m'kay"
But jokes aside,
Its true what they say
The needle, the smoke
To the grass we toke
They all gonna put us
In the ground one day

A talk to make
The masses contemplate
A world on the verge of check mate
A message crafted to motivate  anger
over our mangled state
Writing about our mess
Others playing checkers
While we got Brandon playing chess

Rob bringing the heat
His heart drumming
To a high up righteous beat
Putting Christ on trial
His is a different bible
But his words offer
Their own revival
One of earthly acceptance
Not of heavenly denial

Love is in the air tonight
And we know its gonna show
When the poets start to write
Different perspectives
Differentiate love in
Individuals from the collective
Nerds in love
Lovers out of love
The lonely love
So much love
It's never enough
Love going,
love coming
Blood flowing and love pumping
The hearts on stage are really something

Scott got back
Bringing the Mic
To pick up the slack
And with Bryant
found outta town
Hayden been taking all the flak
Under attack, but for all this love stuff he just ain't got a nack
But its cool, if his girl don't
Like 'em white, she can have 'em black
Or if she wants, another lady in the sack

Jeff has pain and anger in his heart
It looks like a thread pulling
From finish to start
Hopin' and copin' with a world fallin' apart

Rick the wizard
Casting magic with his wand
Castles to pigs, and lizards
In a style of which
We're all quite fond
His spells spell concise
Bringing the might
Every night in a package
Wrapped up oh so tight
Rick the wizard folks
Every Wednesday night

The pen names help us draw to a close
So too the rhythm and rhymes begin slow
To a trickle from the flow
That's all for the show

It's open Mic
Wednesday night
Writers block got the
House rockin'
A party from 8 to 10
Always alive and hoppin'
Bringing heat some
Might call heart stoppin'
But there ain't no stoppin'
17 years and runnin'
And tonight ya see
The pace we're clockin'
Can be measured by the jaws droppin'